Payments partners confirmed for GSMA’s NFC experience

As part of the new NFC Experience at Mobile World Congress, four partners have come together to deliver a mobile contactless payment experience.

CaixaBank, Gemalto, Telefónica and Visa Europe will deliver a payments application which will be offered to 3,500 delegates at Mobile World Congress, taking place February 25-28th in Barcelona. The app, developed by Telefónica Digital, will allow delegates to make mobile contactless payments using a pre-paid card especially developed for mobile payments, which has been enabled to work with Visa’s contactless payment technology. The card is issued by MoneyToPay, the new subsidiary for the prepaid business created by CaixaBank.

Delegates will experience the service on an Xperia smartphone provided by Sony Mobile Communications, and using wallet technology developed by Telefónica Digital.

The app will come pre-loaded with EUR15, allowing delegates to make payments at contactless payment terminals across the Fira Gran Via. In addition, the app will allow payments at any of the 16,000 Visa contactless payment terminals in stores, commercial centres and city markets, as well as 700 taxis installed by CaixaBank around Barcelona.

Sandra Alzetta, Senior Vice President at Visa Europe, said: “Contactless transaction numbers quadrupled across Europe in 2012 and will quadruple again this year. In the UK there are now more than 2.5 million contactless transactions every month. There is a natural evolution from contactless cards to mobile devices and we’ve seen a fantastic response from the markets where this kind of service is commercially available.”